How I went from Author to Professional Speaker with LinkedIn's help

June 16, 2009

Jonathan Yates is an entrepreneur who started his company in his back bedroom, which he then sold subsequently (while retaining 25% of the business) 12 months ago. He now spends his time consulting organisations on corporate entrepreneurship and writing business books. Finally, thanks to LinkedIn, he spends quality time on the professional speaking circuit in the UK and Europe. More on that in the post below.

I thought I would write my very first guest blog post on the quick transition I made from author to professional speaker and how LinkedIn helped me achieve this.

After spending 18 hours a day on my start-up, the lack of sleep finally got to me and I realised that although I have a very creative mind, the day to day detail of running a business was not what I was good at. I am a salesman and proud of it. The business reached the point where I needed help but didn't know it and luckily at this very time a partner asked to buy the majority share of the business. Very good I said and the business was sold.

With the extra time I had, I wrote 100 All-time Essentials for Entrepreneurs (Wiley / Capstone - March 2009) and Freesourcing (Wiley / Capstone - September 2009), which will be released later this year. I was first offered speaking opportunities at Schools and Universities to both undergraduates and MBA courses. The new contacts on the MBA courses invited me to speak at their companies on the story behind the business, the books and my ideas for start-ups in the current economy.

With all of this attention on speaking I thought I should formalise the opportunity and sent out a note to all my LinkedIn contacts describing how I advanced my career and am willing to come and speak at any events and functions for a fee. The response has been overwhelming and I have had to turn down speaking engagements which is both good and bad. Good because there are five in my family and I really enjoy spending time with them all and bad because of all the missed opportunities to network with the business communities I have never met before.

I am really enjoying life at the moment and I have to put it down to my new found ability to network using all the social media sites around. For friends I use Facebook; for day-to-day I use Twitter; but for business I use LinkedIn. Use your precious time wisely and balance your work and life.